"Alas! I know too well—oh! far too well, the truth of all I am saying!" said Rosamond, a hectic glow of excitement appearing upon her cheeks, hitherto so ashy pale. "Yes, father—that woman is a disgrace to her sex! This evening—but two hours ago—I accidentally heard a few words pass between her and Sir Henry Courtenay——"
"Sir Henry Courtenay is at least an honourable man," said Mr. Torrens.
"Sir Henry Courtenay is a monster!" cried Rosamond emphatically: then, bursting into tears again, she threw herself at her father's feet, exclaiming, "Oh! that I had a mother to whom I could unburthen all the woes that fill my heart:—but to you—to you—my dearest parent—how can your daughter confess that she has been ruined—dishonoured—undone?"
"Unhappy girl!" cried the hypocrite, affecting a tone and manner denoting mingled indignation and astonishment: "what dreadful things are these that you have come home to tell me?"
"The truth, my dear father—the horrible, the fatal truth!" continued Rosamond, in a fearfully excited tone.
"Speak lower—lower, my child," said Mr. Torrens: "the servants will be alarmed—they will overhear you. And now resume your seat near me—rise from that humiliating posture—and——"
"Humiliating indeed," interrupted Rosamond, sinking her voice to a comparative whisper, but with an utterance that was almost suffocated by the dreadful emotions raging within her bosom:—"because I myself am so signally humiliated!" she added. "And yet I am innocent, dear father—it was not my fault—not for worlds would I have strayed from the path of virtue! But a hideous plot—a diabolical scheme of treachery—devised between that bad woman and that still more dreadful man——"
"No more—no more, Rosamond!" exclaimed Mr. Torrens, still maintaining a well-affected semblance of indignation and astonishment. "I understand you but too well—and you shall be avenged!"
"Alas! vengeance will not make me what I once was—a happy and spotless girl!" said Rosamond: "and now that I am dishonoured, it would require but the contumely with which the world would treat me, to drive me to utter desperation—to madness, or to suicide!"
Mr. Torrens said all he could to console his unhappy child; and he very readily promised her to abandon all ideas of vengeance on those who had been the authors of her shame.